Full Hot Meal on a 1hr Economy Class Flight

Hop on an 11.5hr flight from Newark to Honolulu on United Airlines in economy class and you’ll be given the choice to buy a meal or snackbox onboard. Don’t want to spend anything? Coffee, tea, or soft drinks (and a stroopwafel starting next month) will have to hold you over. On the other side of the world, however, life is a little different.

My wife and I recently flew two one-hour flights on SriLankan Airlines, from Chennai to Colombo and from Colombo to Male. I booked SirLankan for the stopover in Colombo, but after a few flights on Indian low-cost-carriers, I also looked forward to flying a full-service carrier. Still, I did not expect much on a short flight.

Once airborne, the flight crew quickly sprung to work and in minutes was rolling down aisles with meal and beverage carts. No choice was given on the Chennai to Colombo sector, but a hot Indian vegetarian lunch was served along with choice of beverage:

On the Colombo to Male flight, departing at 7:25a, a choice between a scrambled egg or vegetarian breakfast was given. I ordered scrambled eggs and was surprised at how substantial the meal was and more importantly, how tasty it was – served with chicken sausage and potatoes. It was a filling, satisfying, breakfast.

To be fair, my wife ordered the vegetarian meal and it was as disgusting as it looked—

This post is not about shaming the U.S. carriers into bringing back free meals in economy class (or even premium cabins on shorter flights). First, it will not happen and second, the respective markets are very different and it is fair to say it should not happen. Nevertheless, a meal service on a short flight is appreciated, helping the flight to fly by even quicker and showing that truly full-service, all-inclusive carriers are still in operation.

About Author

Matthew

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he
travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 120
countries over the last decade. Working both in the aviation industry
and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in the New York
Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BBC, Fox News,
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Al Jazeera, Toronto Star, and on NPR. Studying
international relations, American government, and later obtaining a
law degree, Matthew has a plethora of knowledge outside the travel
industry that leads to a unique writing perspective. He has served in
the United States Air Force, on Capitol Hill, and in the White House.
His Live and Let's Fly blog shares the latest news in the airline
industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs and promotions, and
detailed reports of his worldwide travel. His writings on
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@Christian: I think that the American market wants cheap fare and not full service. They’re not willing to pay more to have everything included like complimentary meals and alcohol. They’ve found people are willing to pay a bit more for snacks or freshly-prepared meals onboard and there will be no going back.

Matt, I disagree. For starters, after gasoline prices plummeted about a year ago, did the airlines cut their fares by the appropriate amount? (Rhetorical question. The answer is: hell no!) Their profits went up and if you don’t like it, good look finding a new carrier. The same thing happened in reverse, kind of, as gasoline prices soared: Airline profits sunk even as they did a lot of things well and ticket prices didn’t rise as fast.

So prices remain high, services are cut, and with consolidation, fleet cuts and traffic growth, they can tell consumers to take a hike. Don’t like your FF miles being devalued? Pound sand.

CEO’s also like to propose things that SOUND like it’s going to make more money because that’s drives up stock prices and their buddies who get tipped can make a ton of money (we know that doesn’t happen though, right?) CEO’s largely don’t do much other than carry wheelbarrows full of money out of the office so they have to pretend like they’re generating worth by playing with the org charts and merging divisions, putting cronies into director and VP positions, and writing up mission statements. I’m not kidding. One CEO addressed a company I was working at was proud he had finished filling the high level staffing of his org chart. “Oh, how can we get work done without a VP of the division!” we’d complain daily. “There’s nobody to read a summary of our TPS reports!” Last time I checked, the company was performing well. For now. Until the confidence falls out of the stock market. 2008, looks like we’re going to be visiting you again…

I’ve seen this kind of cutbacks before and there is a cycle to it. For example: Sugar. Thanks to hidden inflation of our great USA economy, the store started selling 4lb bags of sugar priced at… the same price as 5 lb bags. Yeah, like I can’t tell that the price of sugar went up. As if I’m going to do anything about it. Other companies followed suit in the ruse until suddenly, new labels appeared with “A FREE 1lb added!” Same with the toilet paper. A “double roll” today is a “normal” roll in the 70’s (we had smaller butts then.) Then.. after a few years the “double roll” came out.

Back to airlines: Prices will fall AND services improve when there’s more competition. Until then, if you’re a consumer and don’t like paying high prices for cruddy service, go to someone besides Delta, American, and United. And I largely do. I flew Jetblue almost exclusively but they have a new CEO playing with org chart and announced eliminating the free bag. The race to the bottom is fast. The race back up is slow.

I think that US airlines SHOULD bring back complimentary meals on domestic flights that are either transcontinental or near transcontinental, mainland to/from Hawaii and Alaska to/from the lower 48 excluding PDX and SEA. If that is not done voluntarily I think that legislation would be appropriate.